Jeff Price and Audiam Look To Fix YouTube’s Royalty System

“Each month in 2011/2012, there were an estimated 30 billion+ views of videos with music in them. Of those videos, about half have been authorized to have advertisements on them, generating about $1.2 billion over the course of a year. About half of the views are not monetized,” Audiam founder, Jeff Price, explained to me over Skype.

Audiam looks to monetize the other half and get artists paid.

YouTube is the #1 music streaming service in the world. Way above Spotify, Pandora and Rhapsody, combined. How musicians and songwriters can truly make money off of YouTube (other than the obvious “buy this song on iTunes” annotation) is the fuzzy part.

Audiam seeks to offer an easy button to get musicians, songwriters, composers, publishers and labels paid. No paperwork. No loss of rights. No headaches.

Like Tunecore, Jeff Price originally started Audiam for musicians, but once publishers and labels got wind of how effective Audiam’s system is at grabbing revenue and managing copyrights, they began to jump on board.

Artists, composers, publishers and labels can sign up for Audiam. They upload their music and Audiam works with various content ID programs to “fingerprint” the recordings and sift through the billions of videos on YouTube to find this music. Once found, Audiam gets YouTube to place ads on these videos and then Audiam collects this revenue and pays the artist, composer, publisher or label their respective royalty amount.

Videos make money if a banner ad is clicked or a whole video ad is watched (or watched for at least 30 seconds).

But I Already Make Money From YouTube!
If you have already setup a Google Adsense account and make money off of your videos on your channel, you will still earn the exact same amount. Audiam will get ads placed on OTHER USER’s videos (containing your music) and get you paid.

If you want Audiam to collect money from ads on your channel and pay you directly (instead of YouTube), they will (for free). The only benefit to getting Audiam to pay you for ads on your channel is that Audiam has no minimum earning threshold whereas YouTube won’t pay you until you earn $100.

What Does YouTube Pay?YouTube pays out 55% of what advertisers pay them.

Cost
It costs nothing to signup for Audiam. Audiam pays out 75% for revenue collected on other people’s videos and pays 100% on revenue collected from videos on your own channel.

The 3 Copyrights
Every video containing music has 3 copyrights: one for the song (“Composition”), one for the sound recording (“Master”) and one for the video. If you write and record the song and create the video, you own all three.

If Jason Mraz writes a song and you cover it live and upload that video to YouTube, Mraz owns the Composition and you own the Master and the video. However, YouTube will not monetize a video unless they have clearance for ALL THREE copyrights. Mraz will not make money on his song on your video if you don’t authorize it, however, if you both DO (through Audiam) you and Mraz could each earn revenue from that video.

If your fan uploads a video of her baby dancing to your song (that you wrote and recorded), the only way YouTube will place an ad on the video is if both your fan and you authorize it. If YouTube gets clearance, YOU (via Audiam) will get paid all of the earned royalties from that ad.

The ClusterfuckMany videos on YouTube that should be earning thousands aren’t because they either have too many claims, or none at all. Literally, any YouTube Partner that has access to the internal claims section can claim ownership of ANY song in ANY video. YouTube has no way to verify the accuracy of any claim as there is no master database with this information (anyone looking for a startup idea?).

Once there are too many claims, YouTube throws up its arms and says “fuck it, no one’s getting paid” and shuts down the ads.

Audiam goes in and straightens all of this out and gets their users paid.

Audiam has even created a technology that notifies them when someone else attempts to claim their users’ videos. If YouTube removes the ads and shuts down payment, Audiam will know about it immediately and jump in to fix it.

Covers
Audiam also uses various technologies (including YouTube’s “Melody Match” program and basic song title search) to track down cover versions of songs in Audiam’s catalog. Meaning, if your fans cover your song and upload a video, you’ll get paid! So, encourage your fans to cover your songs! Post it on your Facebook, Twitter, website and of course YouTube and say something like, “You have my permission! Here are the chords. Here are the lyrics. Let’s see what you can do!”

Maybe run cover contests and post the winner’s video on your website. Or if you’re a touring artist, have the winner open for you when you tour through her town! If John Mayer ran this contest, I’d enter it.

Pay Your Fans to Use Your Music
One of the coolest features of Audiam is the ability to get your fans paid to use your music in their videos. How it works, you pick a song and allow fans to make money on that one song. Your fans need to sign up to Audiam. Once they do, all they need to do is upload a video with that song in it, click the Authorize button when they get the notice from YouTube, and they’ll start getting paid.

By doing this, you are incentivizing your fans to create videos with your music.

This is a very new feature Audiam is experimenting with and currently artists are only able to give away ALL of their earned royalties for designated songs, but this will change in the future and eventually musicians will be able to designate a percentage of their royalties to share with fans.

As of now, this pay-your-fans feature is only being offered for the month of February, but Price mentioned the feature will become more permanent in the future.

You’re thinking, why would I pay my fans to use my music?! I NEED that money! It’s MY money. Wah. Think of it this way: if you get 10 fans who normally would not have even thought to use your music in their videos, but then decide to and each video gets viewed an average of 1,000 times (during the month of February), that’s 10,000 more views of your song, with 10,000 more people hearing your music. Hell, you can ask your fans to include an annotation linked to iTunes and also include your links in the video description. Think of it like a very cheap ad campaign (that costs you nothing out of pocket). And remember, for god’s sake, this getting-paid-for-your-music-in-other-people’s-videos service didn’t exist to you 5 minutes ago. So try it out! PAY YOUR FANS to use your music.

Fans can browse audiam.com/music to search music to download (for free), use and make money on (for the month of February).

PROs?
Performing Rights Organizations (like ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, SOCAN, etc) have a deal with YouTube. PROs pay their songwriters and publishers for EACH ‘public performance’ (video play) of your song. Theoretically. I haven’t seen any YouTube royalties from ASCAP for my 300,000 views. I’m talking to you ASCAP! Are you there?? (I do appreciate the money you got me for the TV placements though. Thanks!)

Audiam doesn’t have anything to do with the PRO collection. It’s totally separate.

“What drove Peter and I to start and build TuneCore [is] what drives us now:

Artists deserve to be paid for the use of their music. Further, the new music industry is about SERVING the artist, not EXPLOITING them.

Be fair, be transparent, work for them. And never forget, that without the artists and music creators, we would not have a job

We are the best in the world at what we do. The day we are not, we deserve to lose our customer.” – Jeff Price, Audiam

It’s not a new idea, new process, or even remotely original. Others have been doing it for years. Just because you get pitched a story by Jeff doesn’t mean you should regurgitate it. This article is entirely nonsenst

It’s official. DMN is a total joke. I used to think Billboard was a joke and DMN had actual journalism but this is the end. Ari you are so out of tune with the industry that you think anything this co. is doing is newsworthy you need to check yourself and do some homework. The company is a joke and desparately seeking attention to cover for it’s back of originality and market share. Those publisher names they drop won’t make any money on YouTube. no one is watching vids by those publishers and publishers getting hosed by youtube there is no money in this. Make some money, grow a real business, and then seek press.

Clusterfuck:
Audiam has even created a technology that notifies them when someone else attempts to claim their users’ videos. If YouTube removes the ads and shuts down payment, Audiam will know about it immediately and jump in to fix it.

This above paragraph is just a straight lie. YouTube created this technology internally and all YouTube partners use this daily, so Im wondering how you think you can get away with just talking bullshit all the time.

p.s. Is Audiam just using the technology and team of Tunesat, because that is exactly what it looks like. Yet another great “Business Idea”. Thanks for the screenshot image that showed this above.

Audiam actually did create an innovate technology (to my knowledge no one else has or uses this) completely separate from YouTube’s Content ID and Tunesat’s ID (which they also use). It notifies them when monetization gets shut down on their videos because there are too many claims for a video.

Ari, It doesn’t matter how innovative tricks you do around YT – it will remain Tube Player with option to “own”.
The Tube in current arrangement converts gold to sawdust.
The fact that labels and other content owners participate in this arrangement is disgusting!

Let’s show Google how to convert this animal to 50 billion dollar entity beaming happiness and prosperity to all.

“you should also be able to monetize your YouTube plays no matter how small”

You already are. You don’t need ContentID — or Audiam — to be paid for your channel views.

And you don’t need ContentID when you have 300k channel views for the simple reason that there won’t be any user generated content worth mentioning. The kind of UGC we discuss here — the type that can be monetized — begins to pop up when you have several millions of hits. You could also say that this type of UGC begins to pop up because you have several millions of hits.

Ari, sorry but this is what I call free advertising…
And yes there are a bunch of other services who’ve been doing exactly the same for years, with more or less success.
There is not that much money to be made for Indie artists on YouTube.
For sure if you are Jason Mraz, Dolly Parton, Daft Punk…etc you can have an interest in using such service, since so far record labels created a smokescreen around YouTube, by ignorance, incompetence or simply voluntarily.
Audiam is using third-party technologies, yes, combined with YouTube standard ContentID.
But there is absolutely nothing they can do for songwriters/composers/publishers, since the Composition part of rights/royalties are collected by PROs/collecting societies, based on what YouTube reports to them.
Collecting societies do not send claims.
I’m sure Audiam is a good service and, through a combination of various third-party technologies, can identify and claim more than via the usual ContentID.
But think about it: as an Indie artist, who will cover your songs? Who will use your song in an UGC video?
Maybe there are some interesting examples I’d like to hear.
But you may better monetize on your own channel yourself, keep all ad revenues, and forget about UGC which is paid close to nothing compared to YouTube’s owned artist channel.

“But you may better monetize on your own channel yourself, keep all ad revenues, and forget about UGC”

Huh?

That’s almost as nutty as Mr. Price’s latest advice (allow fans to make money from the artist’s music, lol).

There’s a lot of money in UGC — for indie artists, too. Just sign up for YouTube’s own ContentID. It’s easy and it’s free. Read Zoe Keating’s experiences if you want to know more (I’ll post the link in post below).

Sorry for typing too fast.
By “Indie” I meant “small”.
Zoe is not exactly what I’d call a small artist in terms of audience / reach and fan base.
And yes she’s doing great by monetizing herself since she has access to the YouTube CMS (most “small” artists can not get access to it)…

A couple things, Audiam doesn’t take anything from an artist’s own channel. Like I mentioned above, they pay 100%. Or artists can ask Audiam to “whitelist” their channel and Audiam won’t touch it.

Apparently there is nearly $1.2 billion to be made – and most of that money comes from indie artists (as the majors have already monetized most of their videos).

You’re mistaken about songwriters/composers/publishers. It’s incredibly confusing, I understand, and it’s taken me two weeks studying this to fully wrap my head around all the nuances and intricacies. PROs collect on ‘public performances’ (views). They do NOT collect on ad revenue generated. Audiam collects on ad revenue generated (on fan videos). PROs can not get YouTube to place ads on fan videos.

Lots of indie artists get fans to cover their songs. Take Ron Pope. Just search “Ron Pope cover” on YouTube. Also, check out this (fan video) which has over 29 million views. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVsrP9OJ6PA

Yes Ari, I agree.
And monetizing audio on the ad revenue consists in:
sending low quality mp3 files to Google/YouTube for them to use these as fingerprints: basically they store an audio print of the file; when a new audio content is uploaded on YouTube (the audio part from a video), the ContentID system calls YouTube database looking for a positive match; when the match is positive (meaning the audio has been identified and associated to one or several right holders), a “claim” is sent and the video can be “monetized” (monetize meaning ads are placed on the video / when viewers click on the ad it generates an ad revenue through the AdSense programme from Google).
This revenue is generated from the master file, nothing to do with PROs.
PROs get revenue from YT from the number of views/plays, which is “public performance”.
A play also generates mechanical royalties / in Europe PROs centralize the collection and distribution of these to writers & publishers, in the US you guys have a more complicated process

Ari you suck. You took a made up number Jeff gave you and you think it’s write and sit here and defend something when you didn’t do your homework, have no idea what the space is like, don’t realize they are late to the game with nothing to add, and you didn’t even demo the so called tech. WTF man. go away

“This is what i call free advertising”
I would call your continuous spamming the same. I am unfortunately on your email spam list also and would really like to publish that on here as regards as what not to do. Just incase anyone is interested here is how JTV digital email marketing works.
1) Add email address without permission
2) Open email all contacts with a 1000 written word pitch with awful grammar
3) Repeat
4) On the 4th day ( and here is when it gets obscenely amateur) Say that your account has been hacked and you would like to offer a distribution coupon to make up for it.

JTV digital. Stop spamming these boards, stop picking holes in everyone else and get some customers, and take me off your email list!

YouTube should be a 50 billion dollar hub of 100 billion dollar industry with following functions:
A. Source of custom coded tunes for Radio stations or any site or blogger who wants to sale tunes..
B. Self service label to many YouTube made musicians. Old labels can take over for live performance management.
C. Private copy rights registrar
D. Mega music store – which would require limitations on number of free plays. Creator should have right to choose the limit of free plays at 50K 100K or 500K while posting the content.

We can have it if we switch to discovery moment monetization.
Samples of unmarked tunes teasing everywhere. All Radio stations including Pandora with limited display info converted to royalty-free music stores with monthly payouts from YouTube!

see…
it weird convoluted crap like this where we need a better system..
Tunehunter makes more sense sometimes..
and i’m sorry, but jeff price just comes across to me a pure used car saleguy (or A&R guy)..

My take on it is..
1.) Why do artists have to pay out 25% of revenue to have their music monetized..?? Shouldnt google do this on its own (IE: why does a third party have to get involved anyways? thats a tad insane..)
2.) WHY are the PRO’s not doing this??? This kinda stuff is EXACTLY why they were created in the first place..
3.) having fans make videos is great idea.. Paying them to do so is just silly , it doesnt even make sense to have that as an option..

1) Artists cannot monetize fan videos without a service like Audiam (or INDMusic or the others). By signing up for Audiam, artists will not make any less money – only more. Audiam will not take any money earned from the artists’ own channel. The 25% comes from other users’ channels (fan videos). Audiam pays 100% if artists want Audiam to collect on their own channel – but they don’t have to. They can get Audiam to “whitelist” their channel and Audiam won’t touch it.

2) PROs only represent the composition (only songwriters and publishers) for the public performance. If you cover a Jason Mraz song, you will not get paid from the PRO (but Mraz will). PROs also don’t collect ad revenue. They collect a bulk amount from YouTube that gets tossed into their large pot of money and they pay out (to songwriters/publishers).

3) In the future, artists will be able to share their royalties with their fans if they want (but never have to). This feature is so new that Audiam is experimenting with it now and the feature will evolve. I highly doubt in 6 months from now it will work the same way as it does now.

Quote “2) PROs only represent the composition”
Sorry lets use the more general term of Copyright Collective Society (CCS), which DO handle more then just the composition..
Yes the system is outdated, but they are still owned by the Artist,
wouldnt it make more sense to change and update the current system (which has most artists already as members and the existing infrastructure??) then give that money to someone else.?

Quote “1) Artists cannot monetize fan videos without a service like Audiam”
Again, my question was WHY?
Why is this not built into the Youtube service? (sounds to me like the technology is existing, it just needs to be turned on).. Google is the one making the money off this stuff, THE BURDEN OF MAKING IT TRANSPARENT AND EASY SHOULD BE ON THEM.. (not the artist)

Those fans making video are producing content. Why shouldn’t they get paid? Surely not 100% of the content is original, but why does the profit sharing equation need to be 0%? That sounds kind of exploitative to me.

Yep the line between “fan” and “content producer” is completely blurry. In the case of double rainbow, the original artist is a random guy with a camcorder, and the fan is a professional content producer. This is more common on YouTube then you think. It’s often random hobbyists that end up with the viral videos, and pros just ride off of it by making spoofs and response type videos.

“Yep the line between “fan” and “content producer” is completely blurry”

No, it’s carved in stone. And Mr. Price has finally proven in which part of the wood he belongs.

You don’t copy one of MegaUpload’s most infamous ideas — the concept of inviting unauthorized uploaders to profit from copyrighted content at the expense of the owner — if you wish to work with artists.

Not unless you’re… oops.

shadesofsolveigTuesday, January 21, 2014

Obviously Jeff himself has some personal detractors commenting here. I don’t think it makes sense to bash this service purely based on that. I’m just an indie artist – just trying to understand all this. I appreciate the light shed by the article. I have to agree with Ari that the current landscape for indie artist video monetization is confusing. The rights landscape is very convoluted, and it seems other artists can corroborate Ari’s point that ASCAP (and BMI and SESAC) are not quick to deliver that revenue to artists (or their labels and/or publishers). It seems Google has solved some issues with technology, but not all the issues. It *is* Byzantine.

If I am reading this article correctly, it seems Audiam is essentially a way to circumvent the PRO process (among other things). Which I think is a good thing. Currently the pros have an oligopoly and no incentive to get better at getting revenue to artists. A little competition can’t hurt there.

What I would like to see is an article or even a comment by a marketing rep of one of these major artists mentioned who have signed with Audiam (Mraz, Parton, etc.) explaining why they signed and how it’s working for their artist. I

don’t personally care for comments posted anonymously. Show me your name so I know what axe you are grinding. Otherwise, in my opinion, you are not contributing productively to the debate.

Zoe Keating is one of the few artists – indie or major – who has been forthcoming. She has emerged as a champion of fixing the process simply because she is straightforward and open as well as vocal. But she is much more tech savvy than most indie artists, and even she cannot fully explain where all the money goes. I saw a SoundExchange PowerPoint presentation on this at the Future Of Music summit a few years ago. It’s complex. And not very transparent.

To the extent Audiam gains momentum with artists and provides an incentive for the industry to become more open and improve technologies that facilitate artist compensation, I think it’s a good thing. Google and the PROs need other technologies to challenge their hegemony in the area of artist compensation.

1. Yes, I was referring to you. And you still haven’t given me any context for your comments. Or any reason to believe you are the champion of mine or any other indie (or little) artist. Tell me about the tech (or legal, or whatever) solution you are working on that will make my compensation for a song seamless from cradle to grave (or long tail).

2. From Zoe Keating’s biography (on her own website):

“A cellist since the age of eight, Zoë obtained a liberal arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College and spent her 20’s working at a software startup while moonlighting as a cellist in rock bands. She eventually combined the cello and the computer, developing her signature style of live-layered music while improvising for late night crowds at her Francisco warehouse. In 2003 Zoë quit her tech job to focus on making layered cello music.”

She’s a progammer. Maybe not C++, but she knows more tech than a lot of other musicians.

1) Again, I’m not asking anybody to believe anything. On the contrary, I ask other artists to get as much solid information about YouTube monetization as possible because that’s where a lot of their money will come from in the future.

And there are no new ‘tech solutions’, only new tech sites. You get your money from iTunes, gigs, YouTube, teaching and work for hire. Perhaps even in that order.

2) Fair enough, so she’s tech savvy and I should’ve seen that. But that fact is still not related to ContentID: You get it when you need it. Why worry about it until then?

Ari’s 300,000 YouTube views don’t mean anything to anybody except Audiam and similar companies. And these companies are not interested in Ari, either. They want 100,000 artists like him. That’s when it begins to make sense when you’re in the Penny River business.

Quote “it seems Audiam is essentially a way to circumvent the PRO process (among other things). Which I think is a good thing. Currently the pros have an oligopoly and no incentive to get better at getting revenue to artists. A little competition can’t hurt there.”

From what little I understand, its not so much circumventing the PRO’s, but i do believe something like this should be done by the Copyright Collectives..

The problem with the “A little competition can’t hurt” is the artists are technically the OWNERS of the Collective, so they are essentially allowing an outside company to receive money that they could have earned themselves (with some minor changes in how the PROS [or copyright collectives] work)

Not sure why Price keeps beating us over the head with his company–other than shameless publicity. He’s not the only one in the YouTube world with new software. Got a call last month from a software designer who looks to have a better software for finding UGC than anything Audium or the “Ad” companies are doing. I think if someone covers your stuff or re-uploads your video you have the right to do whatever you want when you find it–track, monetize or block it. Sure you can work with the fans as Price suggests, but if you’ve got enough fans throwing up enough videos of your concerts or covers that it makes a $$ difference, then aren’t you past the point of “small”. Besides, Content ID can be used by someone uploading their own videos without a partner agreement. It just takes a little time to be a user at that level. There should be an unbiased article on here comparing the difference between 3rd party reps and the difference between them and the MCNs. Let them all explain how they’re different–the “Ad”s, Audium, Zefr, Fullscreen, Exploration and MakerStudios.

Plus, they have tried to push the LABEL out of any equation with regard t this revenue source. Even though the label is who does the work, they do NOT feel that labels should be collecting for bands even though again, the label does 100% of the work. They are clueless to not only recording contracts, they are also clueless to the fact that label does the work. A band may release a song but if its the label that does the hype, promotion, mkg, etc…and then in turn jo blow uses that song on some animated video which they place online at YouTube. Now, why would the label not be entitled to any of that money? They wrote this article here i think about how labels steal that money from artists by collecting You Tube Monitziation which is a load of shit. Why would the band get to make 100% of that money of the label did all of the placement and collecting for it? I added my catalog of recorded music to that Ad rev company lately and after I read that asinine article by those audium people. They are NOT label friendly. They feel labels take this money from artists no matter if the label does 100% of that promotion work. I get the writer should get their share from a PRO POV but thats not on the label. Thats a precedent that has not been set quite frankly. Again, this is no different than any other placement done by any label. The label should be part of any splits. The Audium people feel labels take from artists. Even if the label did all of the promotion work. Even the label does the placement to whomever makes videos with song beds and yet still…audium feels that 100% of those revenues from YouTube should go to the artist. Even though the label did the work getting it placed. They for some odd reason feel its not right to do that to artists….you should read how they berated labels for taking money from artists when ironically it would be artists and them that take from labels if they had their way. Especially if the label does 100% of the work getting it out there…If audium had their way…they would never work with labels considering they feel labels are taking these revenues from its artists….Honestly, they shot themselves in the foot with us so to speak. They would have a huge burst of money at first before it subsided to what we get every pay period today. As a matter of fact, we added our catalog of recorded music into their system one day and within two days of it, they wrote that article here about how the labels are stealing from artists and how and why is something yet i just don’t get. I guess the label should not make any money. They should do all of the work while laming none of the money for that work….thats how audiam feels about record labels,.

I have a question I haven’t been able to answer with a Google search. My video just went over 10000 views after about a year up. It’s not flashy at all, educational and 12 minutes long, but it will get views forever as long as it’s up. Just after it hit 10000 a few days ago, an ad appeared on it, at the beginning. I’m not getting anything out of it. I’m not upset, but would rather have no advertising on it, because my subject, George Washington Carver, was non-materialistic and it misrepresents him. Thanks. The link:

I record numerous artists… cdbaby does not make it easy when checks come in as to where the royalties for what artist is part of the check and the site is confusing… what is the best for this? also, the money for Youtube… cdbaby does charge.. who is the best for me recording numberous artists… thanks